Coogan’s particular focus is on Ireland’s nationalist/independence movement in the 20th century, a period of unprecedented political upheaval. He blames the Troubles in Northern Ireland on “Paisleyism.”
In 2000, Irish writer and editor Ruth Dudley Edwards is awarded £25,000 damages and a public apology by the High Court in London against Coogan for factual errors in references to her in his book Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (2000). In the book, he writes that Dudley Edwards had “groveled to and hypocritically ingratiated herself with the English establishment to further her writing career.” He also alleges that Dudley Edwards “had abused the position of chairwoman of the British Association for Irish Studies (BAIS) by trying to impose her political views on it” and that her commission to write True Brits had been awarded because of political favouritism.
When TaoiseachEnda Kenny causes confusion following a speech at Béal na Bláth by incorrectly claiming Michael Collins had brought Lenin to Ireland, Coogan comments, “Those were the days when bishops were bishops and Lenin was a communist. How would that have gone down with the churchyard collections?”
Coogan has been criticised by the Irish historians Liam Kennedy and Diarmaid Ferriter, as well as Cormac Ó Gráda, for a supposed lack of thoroughness in his research and bias:
“Well, I waited in this book to hear some great revelation, and it just isn’t there. It’s anticlimactic. I could not see the great plot, and indeed there is no serious historian who … I can’t think of a single historian who has researched the Famine in depth – and Tim Pat has not researched it in depth” (The Famine Plot).
“Coogan is not remotely interested in looking at what others have written on 20th-century Irish history…. he does not appear interested in context and shows scant regard for evidence. He does not attempt to offer any sustained analysis in relation to the challenges of state building, the meaning of sovereignty, economic and cultural transformations, or comparative perspectives on the evolution of Irish society. There is no indication whatsoever that Coogan has engaged with the abundant archival material relating to the subject matter he pronounces on. There is no rhyme or reason when it comes to the citation of the many quotations he uses; the vast majority are not referenced. For the 300-page text, 21 endnotes are cited and six of them relate to Coogan’s previous books, a reminder that much of this tome consists of recycled material…. Tim Pat Coogan… he is a decent, compassionate man who has made a significant contribution to Irish life. But he has not read up on Irish history; indeed, such is the paucity of his research efforts that this book amounts to a travesty of 20th-century Irish history” (1916: The Mornings After).
Sterne is born on November 24, 1713, in Clonmel, County Tipperary, to a British military officer stationed there. Following his father’s postings, the family moves briefly to Yorkshire before returning to Ireland, where they live largely in poverty and move frequently throughout the rest of Sterne’s youth. When the elder Sterne is dispatched to Jamaica, where he would die in 1731, he places his son with a wealthy uncle who supports the boy’s education.
Sterne attends Jesus College, Cambridge, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Richard Sterne, who had been Master of the College. After being ordained as an Anglican priest, he takes up the vicarship of Sutton-on-the-Forest, where he marries Elizabeth Lumley. The couple lives there for the next 20 years.
Through his paternal family line, Sterne is connected to several powerful clergymen. His uncle, Archdeacon Jaques Sterne, encourages him to contribute to Whig political journals, and consequently he writes several articles supporting Sir Robert Walpole. However, when his political fervency fails to match his uncle’s, prompting him to abandon the role of political controversialist, Jaques Sterne cuts ties with his nephew and refuses to support his career. Nevertheless, Sterne continues writing.
Sterne’s first long work, a sharp satire of the spiritual courts entitled A Political Romance, makes him as many enemies as allies. Though the work is not widely distributed and indeed is burned at the request of those targeted by its Swiftian-style criticism, it represents Sterne’s first foray into the kind of humorous satire for which he would become famous. At age 46, he steps back from managing his parishes and turns his full attention to writing.
Sterne begins what becomes his best-known work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, at a moment of personal crisis. He and his wife are both ill with tuberculosis and, in the same year that the first volumes of his long comic novel appear, his mother and uncle Jaques die. The blend of sentiment, humour and philosophical exploration that characterises his works matures during this difficult period. Tristram Shandy is an enormous success, and Sterne becomes, for the first time in his life, a famous literary figure in London. Still suffering from tuberculosis, he leaves England for Continental Europe, where his travels influence his second major work, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768).
Sterne’s narrator in A Sentimental Journey is Parson Yorick, a sensitive but also comic figure who first appears in Tristram Shandy and who becomes Sterne’s fictive alter ego. In A Sentimental Journey, Parson Yorick wears a “little picture of Eliza around his neck,” and in the last year of his life Sterne writes the autobiographical Journal to Eliza under the pseudonym Yorick. Eliza is Eliza Draper, the wife of an East India Company official, and the literary and emotional muse of Sterne’s final years. After Draper returns to India, the two continue to exchange letters, some of which Draper allows to be published after Sterne’s death in the volume Letters from Yorick to Eliza.
In early 1768, less than a month after A Sentimental Journey is published, Sterne’s strength fails him and he dies in his lodgings at 41 Old Bond Street in London on March 18, 1768, at the age of 54. He is buried in the churchyard of St. George’s Hanover Square Church.
(Pictured: Portrait of Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), oil on canvas by Joshua Reynolds, 1760)
As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), Harrington represents Westmeath from February 1883 to November 1885. In 1885 he is elected for the new constituency of Dublin Harbour, which he represents until his death. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin three times from 1901 to 1904.
Harrington owns two newspapers, United Ireland and the Kerry Sentinel, and is a member of the so-called Bantry band of prominent nationalist politicians from the Bantry vicinity. They are also more pejoratively known as the Pope’s brass band. Tim Healy is another prominent member of this unofficial group.
In 1884, Harrington publishes a pamphlet, “Maamtrasna Massacres – Impeachment of the Trials,” in which he dismantles the Crown Prosecution’s case against the eight men accused of the murders of the Joyce family on August 17, 1882. He provides evidence that Crown Prosecutor George Bolton had deliberately suppressed evidence that would have acquitted Maolra Seoighe (English: Myles Joyce), who was hanged, and four men who were sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude.
Thereafter Harrington becomes excluded from Redmond’s closed circle of confidants, retains sympathy with O’Brien, and represents the interests of the tenant farmers at the 1902 Land Conference negotiations which lead to the enactment of the unprecedented WyndhamLand Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903.
On September 7, 1901, as the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Harrington kicks off at the official ceremony to open Bohemian F.C.‘s new home, Dalymount Park.
Harrington retains the party nomination for the Dublin Harbour constituency in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election, largely because of local divisions about who should succeed him and because an O’Brienite offer to pay his election expenses deters rivals from going to the polls. He decides that the finely balanced result of the general election means that every nationalist vote would be required at Westminster. He therefore travels to London, but shortly after attending the parliamentary party meeting on February 23 he suffers a stroke. After some days’ recuperation he is brought home to Dublin, but his condition deteriorates and he dies on March 12, 1910, at his home, 70 Harcourt Street. He is buried near the Parnell circle at Glasnevin Cemetery.
Harrington is celebrated by a statue erected in 2001 at the east end of Castletownbere near the Millbrook bar.
O’Faolain describes her early life as growing up in a Catholic country which, in her view, fears sexuality and forbids her even information about her body. In her writings she often discusses her frustration at the sexism and rigidity of roles in Catholic Ireland that expect her to marry and have children, neither of which she does.
O’Faolain becomes internationally well known for her two volumes of memoir, Are You Somebody? and Almost There; a novel, My Dream of You; and a history with commentary, The Story of Chicago May. The first three are all featured on The New York Times Best Seller list. Her posthumous novel Best Love, Rosie is published in 2009.
O’Faolain’s formative years coincide with the emergence of the women’s movement, and her ability to expose misogyny in all its forms is formidable, forensic and unremitting. However, her feminism stems from a fundamental belief in social justice. Unlike most commentators, who maintain a detached, lofty tone, she places herself at the centre of things, a high-risk strategy that works because of her broad range of erudition, worn lightly, her courage and a truthfulness that sometimes borders on the self-destructive.
O’Faolain is engaged at least once but never marries. In Are You Somebody? she speaks candidly about her fifteen-year relationship with the journalist Nell McCafferty, who publishes her own memoir, Nell. From 2002 until her death, she lives much of the time with Brooklyn-based attorney John Low-Beer and his daughter Anna. They are registered as domestic partners in 2003.
O’Faolain splits her time between Ireland and New York City. She is diagnosed with metastaticcancer and is interviewed on the Marian Finucane radio show on RTÉ Radio 1 on April 12, 2008, in relation to her terminal illness. She tells Finucane, “I don’t want more time. As soon as I heard I was going to die, the goodness went from life.”
In a last attempt to grasp as much of life as she can, O’Faolain holidays with family members in Sicily and visits Berlin with a group of friends to hear music and see art. She previously tended to avoid Berlin because, through contact with Jewish friends and lovers, she associated it with the Holocaust. She dies at the Blackrock Hospice, Dublin, on May 9, 2008.
O’Faolain wins a Jacob’s Award in 1985 for her work as the producer of the RTÉ One television programme Plain Tales. In 2006, she wins the Prix Femina étranger, a French literary award, for The Story of Chicago May.
O’Faolain is the subject of a film documentary, Nuala: A Life and Death (2011), directed by Patrick Farrelly and Kate O’Callaghan, and produced and narrated by Marian Finucane. Hugo Hamilton‘s novel Every Single Minute (2014) is based on his experiences when accompanying O’Faolain to Berlin shortly before her death.
O’Donnell is the youngest among six sons and three daughters of Biddy and James O’Donnell. He is greatly influenced by his upbringing in the Rosses, in northwest Donegal, one of the poorest and most remote parts of Ireland. His father, a popular local fiddler, earns a living through his smallholding, seasonal labouring in Scotland, and winter work in a local corn mill. His mother, who comes from a radical labour and nationalist political background, works in a local cooperative store. He attends Rampart national school and Roshine national school, near Burtonport, where he is a monitor for four years. In 1911 he wins a scholarship to attend St. Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, Dublin, and returns in 1913 to the Rosses, where he spends two years teaching on the islands of Inishfree. In 1915 he is appointed head of Derryhenny national school, near Dungloe, and the following year becomes principal of a national school on the island of Arranmore, where he begins to write.
O’Donnell had long been concerned by the poor conditions of the local ‘tatie-hokers’ (potato pickers) who migrate annually to Scotland. In the summer of 1918, he travels there to help organise the Scottish Farm Servants’ Union. While there he is influenced by left-wing radicals such as Willie Gallacher, later a communistMember of Parliament (MP), and Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell, later Baron Shinwell. In September 1918, against a background of rising labour militancy, he leaves teaching to become a full-time organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) in the west Ulster area. The following year he organises one of Ireland’s first “soviets” when the attendants and nurses of the Monaghan District Lunatic Asylum occupy the grounds and appoint O’Donnell as governor until their demands are met.
In early 1919 O’Donnell joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Monaghan, resigning from the ITGWU for full-time IRA service in late 1920. He leads the 2nd Battalion, Donegal IRA, from the summer of 1920. In December 1920 he goes “on the run” and leads a flying column in west Donegal until May 1921, when he is wounded. Regarded as insubordinate and militarily inexperienced, he is unpopular among the other senior officers of the 1st Northern Division. He, in turn, is disappointed by the lack of social radicalism among the nationalist leadership. He opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, is placed in command of the minority anti-treaty 1st Northern Division and is a member of the IRA executive that occupies the Four Courts in Dublin in defiance of the provisional government.
Arrested in June 1922, O’Donnell shares a prison cell with Liam Mellows and influences his radical “Notes from Mountjoy,” an important document for subsequent left-wing republicans. He spends the next two years in various prisons and internment camps. His execution is widely expected to follow those of December 8, 1922. In August 1923, he is elected as a Sinn FéinTeachta Dála (TD) for Donegal in the general election called after the end of the Irish Civil War. He goes on hunger strike for forty-one days in late 1923 and succeeds in escaping from the Curragh in March 1924. In June 1924, while on the run, he marries Lile O’Donel, a wealthy Cumann na mBan activist who had smuggled communications for republican prisoners. O’Donel, a radical and member of the Communist Party, is the daughter of Ignatius O’Donel, a prominent landowner from Mayo. They have no children but raise their nephew, Peadar Joe, as their own son after the death in New York of O’Donnell’s brother Joe.
O’Donnell begins writing seriously while in jail and remains a prolific writer, journalist, and editor until the 1960s. His first novel, Storm, set in the Irish War of Independence, is published in 1925. One of his most highly regarded books, Islanders, is published in 1928. Adrigoole, like Islanders a story of poverty and starvation in rural Ireland, is published the following year. The Knife (1930) and On the Edge of the Stream (1934) soon follow. The most significant of his later novels is probably The Big Windows (1954). Foremost among his qualities as a writer is his empathy for the people, life, and landscape of rural Ireland. But his novels have been criticised for their slow pace, excessive detail, and didactic nature. He claims his writing is incidental to his political activism. His trilogy of autobiographical non-fiction, The Gates flew Open (1932), Salud! An Irishman in Spain (1936), and There Will Be Another Day (1963), which respectively concern the Irish Civil War, his activism during the Spanish Civil War, and his role in the land annuities agitation, remain highly regarded. His other important literary achievement is with The Bell, an innovative literary and political magazine which plays a useful dissenting role in an insular and conservative period. He founds The Bell with the writer Seán Ó Faoláin in 1940 and edits it from 1946 until it ceases publication in 1954.
O’Donnell exercises an influential role in the interwar IRA, particularly through his editorship of An Phoblacht (1926–29), which he attempts to divert from militarism to socialist agitation. His ultimate aim is for a thirty-two-county socialist republic. His most successful campaign is organising small farmers against the payment of land annuities to the government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This campaign is later adopted by Fianna Fáil and contributes to their electoral success in 1932. He is less successful in radicalising the IRA. After the failure of Saor Éire, a left-wing IRA front which provokes clerical and popular hostility against the IRA, increasing tensions between the IRA’s left-wing and the leadership lead O’Donnell, along with Frank Ryan and George Gilmore, to split from the IRA to establish the short-lived Republican Congress in 1934.
Although O’Donnell claims he was never a Communist Party member, he plays a central role in forging links between republicans and the revolutionary left both in Ireland and internationally and invariably supports the communist party line at critical junctures. After the failure of Republican Congress, he takes up the cause of the Spanish republic. His championing of unpopular causes such as communism and Spain entail a good deal of frustration. He is physically attacked at political meetings and in 1932, despite having never visited the Soviet Union, loses a high-profile libel action against the Dominican Irish Rosary, which claim he had studied in Moscow‘s Lenin College. He is banned from entering the United States for several decades, although he maintains: “My relations with all the great powers continue to be friendly.”
O’Donnell continues to support radical campaigns until his death. He is an outspoken advocate of Irish emigrants. He is prominent in the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and serves as its president in the early 1960s. He is a leading protester against the Vietnam War and a supporter of African anti-colonial movements such as that against apartheid. In later years he is involved in the “Save the west” campaign, highlighting the problems of the west of Ireland.
After several months of ill-health following a heart attack, O’Donnell dies in Dublin, aged 93, on May 13, 1986. He leaves instructions that there are to be “no priests, no politicians and no pomp” at his funeral, and those wishes are granted. He is cremated in Glasnevin Cemetery and his ashes are buried at his wife’s home in Swinford, County Mayo. Although he once remarked that every cause he fought for was a failure, he is now regarded as one of the most influential socialist republican theorists and an important voice of dissent in twentieth-century Ireland.
(From: “O’Donnell, Peadar” by Fearghal McGarry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)
Thomas “Tom” Michael Kettle, parliamentarian, writer, and soldier, is born on February 9, 1880, in Artane, Dublin, the seventh among twelve children of Andrew Kettle, farmer and agrarian activist, and his wife, Margaret (née McCourt). His father’s record in nationalist politics and land agitation, including imprisonment in 1881, is a valuable political pedigree.
The family is prosperous. Kettle and his brothers attend Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School in Richmond Street, Dublin, before being sent to board at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare. Popular, fiery, and something of a prankster, he soon proves to be an exceptional scholar and debater, as well as a keen athlete, cyclist, and cricketer. He enrolls in 1897 at University College Dublin (UCD), his contemporaries including Patrick Pearse, Oliver St. John Gogarty and James Joyce. He thrives in student politics, where his rhetorical genius soon wins him many admirers and is recognised in his election as auditor of the college’s Literary and Historical Society. He also co-founds the Cui Bono Club, a discussion group for recent graduates. In 1899, he distributes pro-Boer propaganda and anti-recruitment leaflets, arguing that the British Empire is based on theft, while becoming active in protests against the Irish Literary Theatre‘s staging of The Countess Cathleen by W. B. Yeats. In 1900, however, he is prevented from taking his BA examinations due to a mysterious “nervous condition” – very likely a nervous breakdown. Occasional references in his private diaries and notes suggest that he is prone to bouts of depression throughout his life. He spends the following two years touring in Europe, including a year at the University of Innsbruck, practising his French and German, before taking a BA in mental and moral science of the Royal University of Ireland (RUI) in 1902. He continues to edit the college newspaper, remaining active in student politics. He participates, for example, in protests against the RUI’s ceremonial playing of “God Save the King” at graduations as well as its senate’s apparent support for government policy, threatening on one occasion to burn publicly his degree certificate.
In 1903, Kettle is admitted to the Honourable Society of King’s Inns to read law and is called to the bar two years later. Nonetheless, he soon decides on a career in political journalism. Like his father, he is a keen supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and in 1904 is a co-founder of the resonantly titled Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League. Here he comes to the notice of John Redmond, who offers him the prospect of a parliamentary seat, but he chooses instead to put his energies into editing the avowedly pro-Irish-party paper, The Nationist, in which he promises that a home rule administration will uphold women’s rights, industrial self-sufficiency, and Gaelic League control of Irish education. He hopes that the paper will offer a corrective alternative to The Leader, run by D. P. Moran, but in 1905 he is compelled to resign the editorship due to an article thought to be anti-clerical. In July 1906, he is persuaded to stand in a by-election in East Tyrone, which he wins with a margin of only eighteen votes. As one of the youngest and most talented men in an ageing party, he is already tipped as a potential future leader. His oratory is immediately put to good use by the party in a propaganda and fund-raising tour of the United States, as well as on the floor of the House of Commons, where his oratorical skills earn him a fearsome reputation. He firmly advocates higher education for Catholics and the improvement of the Irish economy, while developing a close alliance with Joseph Devlin and the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH).
Kettle meanwhile makes good use of his connections to ArchbishopWilliam Walsh, the UCD Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Catholic Graduates and Undergraduates Association, as well as political support, to secure the professorship of national economics. T. P. Gill, of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, exceptionally acts as his referee. His detractors regard the appointment as a political sinecure and Kettle as a somewhat dilettantish “professor of all things,” who frequently neglects his academic duties. However, he takes a keen interest in imperial and continental European economies. He does publish on fiscal policy, even if always taking a pragmatic interest in wider questions, greatly impressing a young Kevin O’Higgins, later Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. He has little time for what he regards as the abstract educational and economic idealism of D. P. Moran. He acknowledges that the “Hungarian policy” of Arthur Griffith has contributed significantly to a necessary debate about the economy, but argues that the Irish are “realists,” that Ireland’s natural resources ought to be scientifically measured, and that the imperial connection is crucial to Ireland’s future development. The achievement of home rule would, he asserts, encourage a healthy self-reliance as opposed to naive belief in self-sufficiency.
Kettle is encouraged by the heightened atmosphere of the constitutional crisis over the 1909 David Lloyd Georgebudget, culminating in the removal of the House of Lords veto, which has been an obstacle to home rule. He is also a supporter of women’s enfranchisement, while stressing that the suffragist cause should not delay or deflect attention from the struggle for home rule. He holds his East Tyrone seat in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election but decides not to stand at the general election in December of the same year. Returning to an essentially journalistic career, he publishes a collection of essays outlining his constitutional nationalist position. He opposes suffragette attacks on private property, but, in contrast, supports the Dublin strikers in 1913, highlighting their harsh working and living conditions. He tries without success to broker an agreement between employers and workers though a peace committee he has formed, on which his colleagues include Joseph Plunkett and Thomas P. Dillon. His efforts are not assisted, however, by an inebriated appearance at a crucial meeting. Indeed, by this time his alcoholic excesses are widely known, forcing him to attend a private hospital in Kent.
In spite of deteriorating health, Kettle becomes deeply involved in the Irish Volunteers formed in November 1913 to oppose the Ulster Volunteers. His appraisal of Ulster unionism is somewhat short-sighted, dismissing it as being “not a party [but] merely an appetite,” and calling for the police to stand aside and allow the nationalists to deal with unionists, whose leaders should be shot, hanged, or imprisoned. These attitudes are mixed in with a developing liberal brand of imperialism based on dominion federalism and devolution, warmly welcoming a pro-home-rule speech by Winston Churchill with a Saint Patrick’s Day toast to “a national day and an empire day.” Nevertheless, he uses his extensive language skills and wide experience of Europe to procure arms for the Irish Volunteers. He is in Belgium when the Germans invade, and the arms he procured are confiscated by the Belgian authorities, to whom they were donated by Redmond on the outbreak of war.
On his return to Dublin, Kettle follows Redmond’s exhortation to support the war effort. He is refused an immediate commission on health grounds, but is eventually granted the rank of lieutenant, with responsibilities for recruitment in Ireland and England. He makes further enemies among the advanced nationalists of Sinn Féin, taunting the party for its posturing and cowardly refusal to confront Ulster unionists, the British Army, and German invaders alike. Coming from a staunchly Parnellite tradition, he is no clericalist, yet he is a devout if liberal Catholic, imbued by his Jesuit schooling with a cosmopolitan admiration for European civilisation which has been reinforced by his European travels, and in particular has been outraged by the German destruction of the ancient university library of Louvain. Despite a youthful flirtation with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, he comes to regard “Prussianism” as the deadliest enemy of European civilisation and the culture of the Ten Commandments, there not being “room on earth for the two.” He increasingly believes that the German threat is so great that Irish farmers’ sons ought to be conscripted to defend Ireland. He also believes that considerable good might come out of the conflict, exhorting voters in East Galway to support what is practically a future home rule prime minister, cabinet, and Irish army corps. He unsuccessfully seeks nomination as nationalist candidate in the 1914 East Galway by-election in December. Nevertheless, he continues to work tirelessly on behalf of the party, publishing reviews, translations, and treatises widely in such journals as the Freeman’s Journal, The Fortnightly Review, and the Irish Ecclesiastical Record.
As a recruiting officer based far from the fighting, Kettle is stung by accusations of cowardice from advanced nationalists. He had tried repeatedly to secure a front-line position, but was rejected, effectively because of his alcoholism. He is appalled by trench conditions and the prolongation of the war, a disillusionment further encouraged by the Easter Rising, in which his brother-in-law, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, is murdered by a deranged Anglo-Irish officer, J. C. Bowen-Colthurst. He senses that opinion in Ireland is changing, anticipating that the Easter insurgents will “go down in history as heroes and martyrs,” while he will go down, if at all, as “a bloody British officer.” Nevertheless, he regards the cause of European civilisation as greater than that of Ireland, remaining as determined as ever to secure a combat role. Despite his own poor health and the continuing intensity of the Somme campaign, he insists on returning to his unit, the 9th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
Kettle’s writings demonstrate the mortal danger he is placing himself in, evident not least in his frequently quoted poem, “To my daughter, Betty, the gift of God,” as well as letters settling debts, apologising for old offences, and providing for his family – his wealth at death being less than £200. He has no death wish, wearing body armour frequently, but as Patrick Maume notes, “As with Pearse, there is some self-conscious collusion with the hoped-for cult.” He is killed on September 9, 1916, during the Irish assault on German positions at Ginchy.
Kettle marries Mary Sheehy, alumna of UCD, student activist, suffragist, daughter of nationalist MPDavid Sheehy, and sister-in-law of his friend Francis Sheehy Skeffington, on September 8, 1909. In 1913 the couple has a daughter, Elizabeth.
Kettle is commemorated by a bust in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and in the House of Commons war memorial in London. He is a man of great passions and proven courage. George William Russell put his sacrifice on a par with Thomas MacDonagh and the Easter insurgents:
“You proved by death as true as they, In mightier conflicts played your part, Equal your sacrifice may weigh, Dear Kettle, of the generous heart (quoted in Summerfield, The myriad minded man, 187).
(From: “Kettle, Thomas Michael (‘Tom’)” by Donal Lowry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Tom Kettle as a barrister when called to the Irish law bar in 1905)
During the first part of 1879, O’Neill responds to an item in The Washington Star calling for men to migrate to the Arizona Territory. He arrives in Phoenix, riding a burro, in September of the same year. Upon his arrival in town, he is hired as a printer by the Phoenix Herald. By late 1880, he has become bored with the position and seeks to experience the “Real West” in the boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona.
In Tombstone, O’Neill takes the opportunity to experience the local saloons before taking a job with The Tombstone Epitaph. By mid-1881 he again feels a wanderlust and leaves town. Where he goes next is unknown, one story having him journey to Hawaii, unlikely due to the travel time, and then traveling through California. He is known to visit Santa Fe before going to Albuquerque, New Mexico and works briefly as a court reporter. In early 1882, he is back in Phoenix working as a deputy to Marshal Henry Garfias. Several weeks later he moves to Prescott, his home for the next fifteen years.
In Prescott O’Neill rapidly progresses in his journalistic career. Starting as a court reporter, he soon founds his own newspaper, Hoof and Horn, a paper for the livestock industry. He becomes the editor of the Arizona Miner weekly newspaper in 1884 to February 1885.
In 1886, O’Neill becomes captain of the Prescott Grays, the local unit of the Arizona Militia. On February 5, 1886, Dennis Dilda, a convicted murderer, is hanged. O’Neill and the Prescott Grays stand honor guard for the event. When the trap drops, O’Neill faints, which causes him severe embarrassment. He later writes a story called “The Horse of the Hash-Knife Brand.” In it, a member of a posse admits to nearly fainting at the hanging of a horse thief.
On April 27, 1886, O’Neill marries Pauline Schindler. They have a son, but he dies shortly after being born premature.
On March 20, 1889, four masked men, William Sterin, John Halford, Daniel Harvick, and J. J. Smith, rob the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad passenger train in Canyon Diablo. A four-man posse, made up of O’Neill, Jim Black, Carl Holton, and Ed St. Clair, is soon formed and they take off after the robbers. On April 1, the posse catches up with the robbers. After exchanging rifle shots, the posse captures the four men. During the fight, no men are injured, but one of the robber’s horses is killed. All four are sent to the Yuma Territorial Prison but are pardoned eight years later. There is unfounded speculation that, in 1898, Sterin enlists under a false name in the Rough Riders and is killed in action in the Battle of San Juan Hill.
After his term is up, O’Neill is unanimously elected mayor of Prescott. In 1894 and 1896 he runs for Delegate to the United States House of Representatives from Arizona Territory, running on the People’s Party ticket.
In 1897, after years of speculating on mines, O’Neill sells a group of claims near the Grand Canyon to Chicago backers, who also propose building a railroad from Williams to the mines and the South Rim. He becomes a director of the development companies, and soon begins railroad surveys, mine developments, and building a smelter. He also uses profits to begin building rental buildings, leading him to financial independence.
O’Neill also helps introduce a bill allowing women to vote in municipal elections in 1897. Although he convinces his Populist friends to sign the bill into law, the high court dismisses the bill in 1899.
In 1898, war breaks out between the United States and Spain. O’Neill joins Theodore Roosevelt‘s Rough Riders and becomes Captain of Troop A. First Lieutenant Frank Frantz serves as O’Neil’s Deputy Commander. Along with Alexander Brodie and James McClintock, he tries to make an entire regiment made up of Arizona cowboys. Eventually though, only three troops are authorized.
The Rough Riders land at Daiquirí on June 22, 1898. Two Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment fall overboard. Upon seeing this, O’Neill jumps into the water in full uniform and sabre. He searches for the men for two minutes before having to come up for breath.
On June 25, 1898, the Rough Riders see their first action. O’Neill leads his men at the front of the line in the Battle of Las Guasimas, capturing the Spanish flank. During the action he sees several men, who he believes to be Spaniards, across the road from him, and shouts “Hostiles on our right, fire at will!” He learns after the firing ceases that the men he exchanged shots with were Cuban rebels.
On July 1, 1898, at about 10:00 a.m., the Rough Riders and the 10th Cavalry are stationed below Kettle Hill. The Spaniards, who are on top of the hill, pour Mauser rifle fire down on the Americans. O’Neill is killed in action.
Before the fighting is over, O’Neill’s men bury him on the slope of San Juan Hill. After the war, his family and friends enlist help from the United States Department of War to find and recover his body. After six men fail to find the site, the War Department sends Henry Alfred Brown, the Rough Riders’ Chaplain, to find him. Despite it being eight months since O’Neill’s death, Chaplain Brown locates the site within two hours after arriving in Santiago de Cuba. The well-preserved body is exhumed, placed in a coffin, and returned to the United States on the Army transport Crook. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington County, Virginia. The epitaph on his gravestone reads, “Who would not die for a new star on the flag?”
On July 3, 1907, a monument by sculptor Solon Borglum is dedicated to O’Neill and the other Rough Riders in their memory in Prescott, Arizona. Seven thousand people gather to witness the unveiling.
David Patrick Moran (Irish: Dáithí Pádraig Ó Móráin), better known as simply D. P. Moran, Irish journalist, activist and cultural-political theorist, dies on January 31, 1936. He is known as the principal advocate of a specifically Gaelic CatholicIrish nationalism during the early 20th century. Associated with the wider Celtic Revival, he promotes his ideas primarily through his journal, The Leader, and compilations of his articles such as the book The Philosophy of Irish Ireland.
Moran is born in Manor, a townland in Waterford, the youngest of twenty children born to James Moran, a builder, and Elizabeth Moran (née Casey). One of his brothers goes on to serve on the defense team of Patrick O’Donnell.
Despite the failure of the 1893 Home Rule Bill and the division of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in 1891, nationalists take heart from Douglas Hyde‘s 1892 speech, entitled “The Necessity for De-anglicising Ireland.” Moran builds upon this thesis and provides a wider ideology for enthusiasts, particularly after the re-unification of most of the nationalist parties from 1900.
In his 1905 text The Philosophy of Irish-Ireland, Moran argues that to be Irish requires:
the use of the Irish language
membership in the Roman Catholic Church
an anti-materialist outlook on life
the playing of only Gaelic games
Though a sponsor of the use of Irish, he never becomes fluent in the language himself. He emphasises the use of English in 1908–09 as “an active, vigilant, and merciless propaganda in the English language.” In the longer term, when Irish becomes again the language of the people, its use enables a de facto censorship of any foreign and unwelcome ideas written in English.
While Moran argues that the idea of “the Gael” is one that can assimilate others, he also feels that it will be hard if not impossible for members of the Church of Ireland who support the British Empire to ever qualify as Irish, being “resident aliens.” This extends to Anglo-Irish literature. He rejects the Abbey Theatre and questions Yeats‘ genius. He once speaks out against the influence Britain has over Irish Universities, stating, “We are all Palemen now.” In the matter of religious differences, Daniel O’Connell had said in 1826 that “the [Roman] Catholics of Ireland are a nation.” Moran moves beyond that, affirming in 1901 that “…the Irish Nation is de facto a Catholic nation.” He is virulent in his opposition to female suffrage.
Moran’s articles frequently contrast “Belfast” with “Ireland,” yet hope that Belfast can eventually change and assimilate. He feels that Ulster unionists should “… be grateful to the Irish nation for being willing to adopt them.” His paper publishes numerous articles by the future TDArthur Clery (writing under the pen name “Chanel”), who advocates partition on the grounds that Ulster unionists are a separate nation, but Moran himself disagrees and refuses to concede the legitimacy of a northern Protestant identity.
When Irish republicans initiate the Irish War of Independence in 1919, widescale anti-Catholic rioting breaks out in Belfast in 1920 and 1922. Moran identifies this as being caused by Orangeism, which he describes as “a sore and a cancer” in Ireland. He also alleges that “bigotry on the part of Catholics in the Six Counties is immediately due to Orange bigotry.”
Moran is initially a supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party, believing that the separatism advocated by Arthur Griffith‘s Sinn Féin is impracticable; however, he opposes John Redmond‘s support of the British World War I effort.
Moran supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty agreed in 1921–22 and sees the partition of Ireland as beneficial for a truly Irish culture in the Irish Free State. This causes a sea-change in his opinions; from now on Northern Ireland can be safely ignored, along with what he sees as the English evils of “free thought, free trade, and free literature.” He claims Irish life and culture has to be protected from foreign influences, including the twin evils of the music hall and the English press. The new jazz music of the 1920s and other imported cultural elements are deprecated as “imported debasement and rot.”
On January 9, 1901, Moran marries Theresa Catherine, daughter of Thomas Francis O’Toole, a former Parnellite mayor of Waterford. They have four sons and one daughter.
Moran dies suddenly at his home in Skerries, Dublin, on January 31, 1936. His daughter, Nuala, who has written for the paper since the early 1920s, generally on artistic and social matters, takes over the running of the paper on his death, though it is then much diminished in size and influence. Nuala, who never marries, retains control of The Leader until it ceases publication in 1971.
Blackham is born in London, England, on December 16, 1891. His father, William George Blackham, is an Ulster Protestant from Newry, while his mother is an Englishwoman named Evison Elizabeth Saunders. An uncle is Robert J. Blackham who is the Surgeon-General to the British Army in Ireland. The family are evangelical Protestants, against which he rebels. Having been brought up to take the Bible literally, he suffers a religious crisis upon the realisation his teachers at school do not. He finds the transition to adulthood difficult, particularly due to the early death of his father.
For a time, Blackham moves in socialist circles, under the influence of Ulster socialist Robert Wilson Lynd. However, upon the discovery that his father had been a Protestant who had been in favour of Irish home rule and also had some republican sympathies, he turns toward Irish nationalism.
Blackham becomes involved in the Gaelic League while in London. he Gaelicizes his name to Aodh Sandrach de Blácam or Hugh de Blácam, despite his non-Gaelic ethnic origin. He learns the Irish language from the essayist Robert Wilson Lynd. During this time, he seeks to synthesize his urge to reclaim his sense of Irish nationality with the works and thoughts of hardline Catholic author G. K. Chesterton. It is partially because of Chesterton’s influence that he converts to Catholicism, although the conversion of Protestant Irish Nationalists to Catholicism is common throughout the early 20th century. Another influence upon his decision to convert is his desire to marry Catholic Mary McCarville of County Monaghan.
In May 1914 de Blácam returns to Ireland and begins working as a freelance journalist. He joins the Enniscorthy Echo as a journalist in 1915.
During the Irish War of Independence de Blácam writes nationalist propaganda alongside Arthur Griffith and Herbert Moore Pim. He is interned by the British in 1919. During this time period he writes two political manifestoes: Towards the Republic; a study of new Ireland’s social and political aims (1918) and What Sinn Féin Stands For (1921). The two books argue that at their root, Catholic social teaching (CST) and Bolshevism are essentially identical and that Ireland, having only experienced feudalism and capitalism because of external forces, can skip many of the phrases normally described in the Marxist Trajectory of historical development and go straight to a soviet-type society, an idea not dissimilar to the two-stage theory. He imagines this soviet-type society to be an Irish-speaking decentralised rural cooperative commonwealth. Critics of Sinn Féin frequently cite his works as proof of the infeasibility of Sinn Féin’s aims.
De Blácam opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and subsequently aids the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish Civil War. For this he is interned by the newly created Irish Free State in 1922. Following his release, he continues to pin his flag to the mast of Éamon de Valera and his newly formed Fianna Fáil party. He believes De Valera fully embodies his own political ideas.
During the 1920s de Blácam joins The Irish Times, which he later leaves to become editor of The Catholic Standard. For seventeen years he writes a feature in the Fianna Fáil aligned The Irish Press called “Roddy the Rover.”
It was also during the 1920s that de Blácam moves to Dublin, where he begins to move in the same circles as George Bernard Shaw, George Russell, and W. B. Yeats. He hopes all three men might one day convert to Catholicism as he did and is sorely disappointed when each do not. Upon the death of Yeats, he goes so far as to refer to Yeats’ poem as “Demonic.” He has similar hopes for Peadar O’Donnell but is similarly disappointed in his lack of interest in conversion.
In 1938 de Blácam publishes The Black North, a book which carries an introduction by de Valera. In the book he argues that Ulster Protestants are in actuality both Irish and Catholic, but they simply do not realise it. Among his arguments to support this idea are the suggestions that the presbyterian emphasis on self-government is derived from the Gaelic clan tradition, that presbyterian “kailyard” writers of rural nostalgia such as Lydia Mary Foster exemplify the naturally Irish piety and purity of her co-religionists, and that the fact that some workers commute from the Armagh borderland to work in Dundalk factories prove that the south is better off economically than the north.
It is suggested de Blácam is an influence upon de Valera’s 1943 broadcast “The Ireland That We Dreamed Of.” Politically he is highly considered about rural depopulation and is involved in a number of organisations seeking to end it. He advocates more economic autarky and cultural protectionism to combat rural depopulation and lamented urbanisation and industrialisation. He also tries to convince the Fianna Fáil executive that they should ban women from emigration as well as ban women from factories in order to force women to remain in rural Ireland. His ideas fail to impress the executive, with Seán MacEntee in particular standing in strong disagreement.
De Blácam is a member of the Fianna Fáil executive until 1947, when he defects to the upstart Irish Republican party Clann na Poblachta. For this move he is immediately fired from The Irish Press. He stands for Clann na Poblachta in the Louth constituency at the 1948 Irish general election but is not elected.
During the brief period in which Clann na Poblachta is in government, de Blácam serves as an official spokesman for the Department of Health and as a speechwriter to Noël Browne, the embattled Minister for Health.
De Blácam dies while working in the Custom House on January 16, 1951. His funeral is attended by many dignitaries including TaoiseachJohn A. Costello and former Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. He is buried in New Mellifont Abbey, County Louth.
Hutchinson is born in Glasgow, Scotland, on February 16, 1927. His father, Harry Hutchinson, a Scottish printer whose own father had left Dublin to find work in Scotland, is Sinn Féin treasurer in Glasgow and is interned in Frongoch internment camp in 1919–21. His mother, Cathleen Sara, is born in Cowcaddens, Glasgow, of emigrant parents from County Donegal. She is a friend of Constance Markievicz. In response to a letter from Cathleen, Éamon de Valera finds work in Dublin for Harry as a clerk in the Labour Exchange, and later he holds a post in Stationery Office.
Hutchinson is five years old when the family moves to Dublin and is the last to be enrolled in St. Enda’s School before it closes. He then goes to school at Synge Street CBS where he learns Irish and Latin. One of his close friends there is the poet and literary critic John Jordan. In 1948 he attends University College Dublin (UCD) where he spends a year and a half, learning Spanish and Italian.
Having published some poems in The Bell in 1945, Hutchinson’s poetic development is greatly influenced by a 1950 holiday in Spain and Portugal. A short stop en route at Vigo brings him into contact for the first time with the culture of Galicia. Later, in Andalusia, he is entranced by the landscape and by the works of the Spanish poets Federico García Lorca, Emilio Prados and Luis Cernuda.
In 1951 Hutchinson leaves Ireland again, determined to live in Spain. Unable to get work in Madrid, as he had hoped, he travels instead to Geneva, where he gets a job as a translator with the International Labour Organization, which brings him into contact with Catalan exiles, speaking a language then largely suppressed in Spain. An invitation by a Dutch friend leads to a visit to the Netherlands, in preparation for which he teaches himself the Dutch language.
Hutchinson returns to Ireland in 1953 and becomes interested in the Irish language poetry of writers such as Piaras Feiritéar and Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh and publishes a number of poems in Irish in the magazine Comhar in 1954. The same year he travels again to Spain, this time to Barcelona, where he learns the Catalan and Galician languages, and gets to know Catalan poets such as Salvador Espriu and Carles Riba. With the British poet P. J. Kavanagh, he organises a reading of Catalan poetry in the British Institute.
Hutchinson goes home to Ireland in 1957 but returns to Barcelona in 1961 and continues to support Catalan poets. An invitation by the publisher Joan Gili to translate some poems by Josep Carner leads to the publication of his first book, a collection of thirty of Carner’s poems in Catalan and English, in 1962. A project to publish his translation of Espriu’s La Pell de brau (The Bull-skin), falls through some years later. Some of the poems from this project are included in the collection Done into English.
In 1963, Hutchinson’s first collection of original poems in English, Tongue Without Hands, is published by Dolmen Press in Ireland. In 1967, having spent nearly ten years altogether in Spain, he returns to Ireland, making a living as a poet and journalist writing in both Irish and English. In 1968, a collection of poems in Irish, Faoistin Bhacach (A Lame Confession), is published. Expansions, a collection in English, follows in 1969. Friend Songs (1970) is a new collection of translations, this time of medieval poems originally written in Galician-Portuguese. In 1972 Watching the Morning Grow, a new collection of original poems in English, comes out, followed in 1975 by another, The Frost Is All Over.
In October 1971, Hutchinson takes up the Gregory Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Leeds, on the recommendation of Professor A. Norman Jeffares. There is some controversy around the appointment following accusations, later retracted, that Jeffares had been guilty of bias in the selection because of their joint Irish heritage. He holds tenure at the University for three years, and during that time contributes to the University’s influential poetry magazine Poetry & Audience.
From 1977 to 1978 Hutchinsonn compiles and presents Oró Domhnaigh, a weekly radio programme of Irish poetry, music and folklore for Ireland’s national network, RTÉ. He also contributes a weekly column on the Irish language to the station’s magazine RTÉ Guide for over ten years. A collaboration with Melita Cataldi of Old Irish lyrics into Italian is published in 1981. Another collection in English, Climbing the Light (1985), which also includes translations from Irish, Italian and Galician, is followed in 1989 by his last Irish collection, Le Cead na Gréine (By Leave of the Sun). The Soul that Kissed the Body (1990) is a selection of his Irish poems translated into English. His most recent English collection is Barnsley Main Seam (1995). His Collected Poems is published in 2002 to mark his 75th birthday. This is followed in 2003 by Done into English, a selection of many of the translated works he produced over the years.
A co-editor and founder of the literary journal Cyphers, Hutchinson receives the Butler Award for Irish writing in 1969. He is a member of Aosdána, the state-supported association of artists, from which he receives a cnuas (stipend) to allow him to continue writing. He describes this as “a miracle and a godsend” as he is fifty-four when invited to become a member and is at the end of his tether. A two-day symposium of events is held at Trinity College Dublin, to celebrate his 80th birthday in 2007, with readings from his works by writers including Macdara Woods, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan and Sujata Bhatt. His most recent collection, At Least for a While (2008), is shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award.
Hutchinson lives in Rathgar, Dublin, and dies of pneumonia in Dublin on January 14, 2012. His extensive archive is in the library of Maynooth University. Its opening on May 24, 2015, is accompanied by the inauguration of an annual Pearse Hutchinson seminar and the launch of a collection of unpublished Hutchinson poems, Listening to Bach.
Some critics argue that Hutchinson’s concern with simplicity and Ireland’s place in the comparative history of human oppression too often deteriorates into banality, didacticism, and regurgitation of sentimental revivalist tropes. Even these, however, acknowledge his occasional greatness, while his champions argue that his achievement has not yet been fully recognised and absorbed.
seamus dubhghaill 